Matzav Schmooze: Are We All Hypocrites?

After every tragedy that is either gun or terror related, we can turn off our news apps for a few days, knowing exactly what we’re about to inundated with.

“This is why we need tighter immigration security,” Fox News will shout after a terrorist drives his van into pedestrians. “Gun control, gun control, gun control,” was CNN’s refrain following the most recent Texas shooting.

Invariably, the counter response from both sides will be to reprimand their opponent’s politicization of a tragedy. After time passes and the nation’s passion for change is cooled, they both settle into their old arguments.

Right wingers will say that while gun attacks happen, the issue is a minority of bad people who, if they wanted to carry out the attack, would have gotten the gun through illicit means anyways. Why let a few bad apples ruin it for everyone else who use the Second Amendment to protect their homes and families?

Meanwhile on the left, the argument is as follows: while terror attacks do happen, the issue is a minority of radicalised people, who could have smuggled their way into this country anyways. Why let a few bad apples ruin it for everyone else who makes their way to this country to find safety and prosperity for their families?

Does anyone else see the double standard from both sides? Yes there are other arguments from both sides (i.e Second Amendment was passed before the advent of assault weapons, immigrants aren’t a terror issue they are an economical burden etc.) but essentially both parties are saying that the majority of good outweighs the minority of deaths they cause. And each side gets mad when the other uses this argument, failing to recognize the similarities it holds to their own argument!

Gun ownership is a right. Immigration is not. Gun ownership saves lives. Immigration does not. Legal gun owners don’t secretly admire him criminals. Many immigrants share the ideology of the “bad apples”. Yup. Lots of differences. The three I listed are just a starting point. I’m sure others can come up with more. It’s not a double standard. It’s common sense.

Someone told me his grandparents ran guns for the Haganah.
When Mayor Lindsay had a Gun Amnesty,they wanted to turn in an old rifle.
They were so embarrassed from neighbors,that they wrapped and rewrapped it before taking it even outside.

You have to understand the main reason behind right winger’s extreme anti-gun approach is because the 2nd Amendment was not created only for self-defense, it was created to prevent government tyranny. If you look at history, in the years before a ruler became a tyrant, the first step was to disarm the public.
The left claims that such reasoning is absurd and outdated. But with progressives increasingly pushing bigger government, and “thought police” arresting people in the UK because of insensitive Facebook comments about Muslims, such a reality is something that should be taken more seriously.
Another story in the UK when the government didn’t allow a young couple to transfer their baby (Charlie Gard) to the US for experimental treatment because the government felt the child would rather die than go through the painful treatment that could save his life.
That baby ended up being killed by having life support removed against the wishes of the parents.
In Canada, a province passed a measure that would allow the government to forcibly take a child away from it’s family and put it in foster care if the parents oppose the child’s gender identity.
California recently passed a law that criminalizes knowingly calling a transgender person by the wrong pronoun. So far it only applies to nursing homes, but that can change.
The left is moving further and further towards normalized facism, which is why an armed populace is necessary.

Sorry to be so blunt but you have laid out the arguments misrepresenting both sides.
I will try to clarify the side that you call the “right wingers”. The basic argument is that while guns are used by bad guys, the laws would not really stop them from doing their actions as they don’t really care about legalities. As a matter of fact fully automatic machine guns are illegal in all 50 states, nevertheless they were used recently in the horrific incident in Las Vegas. The main point though (that seemed to go over your head) is that it is law abiding citizens who carry guns that can stop these actions more quickly. It is the logical conclusion then that the laws would just make it easier for terrorists/crazys/physcos to commit their actions against a bunch of helpless citizens. In the recent attack in a church, since it was a gun free location the people there were completely at the mercy (or lack of it) of the gunman(who didn’t care about that rule.)
Taking our guns away that would only be used in self defense situations put every one else at a greater risk.

We have a right to defend ourselves and our families. People do not have a right to move here. Also, not all bad that comes from immigration is crime and terror. Immigrants tend to be poorer, on welfare more often, have issues integrating with society, and generally are less likely to succeed than the average American. It’s one thing if they were already citizens, but why import liabilities? It’s not that most immigrants are good, most are bad but not in a terrorist way.On the subject of the whole “second amendment doesn’t apply to modern weapons” thing: First of all, there were weapons similar to modern guns, like the Girandoni rifle, which had a 20 round magazine, was semi-automatic, and could shoot accurately over 100 yards. They also had the French mitrailleuse and other similar guns. Second, they knew weapons tech would advance. Third, no one argues that the only right to free speech you have is on printing press material because we recognize that speech is speech, even though the internet would have been way harder for the founding fathers to imagine than a modern rifle. Similarly, defense is defense, regardless of the tool.

Immigration:
America used to screen immigrants. As a child, I had the natural impression that immigrants were often more patriotic (out of gratitude) and more driven for success than the average born-American. That’s because those immigrants WERE like that because America used to have standards for who they let in.

However, if you just take a random sampling of people from, say, Somalia or Venezuela or Papua New Guinea, then you will have some problems. These are Third World countries with very different (and indeed immoral) attitudes, values, and customs that are ingrained within that culture. You need to pick out the decent ones by hand, so to speak. If things like violence, domestic violence, child slavery, honor killings, poor work ethic, violent retaliations for accidents or mistakes, corruption, lying, exploitation are endemic in that culture, then it’s likely that it’s common among whatever sample of immigrants you let in.

Guns:
Nearly all (if not all) mass killings in America have been committed by people on or just coming off of prescription medication. The LV shooter was taking Valium. If they didn’t have guns, they would use something else, like 2 of the family murders that occurred in Eretz Yisrael, may Hashem have mercy, in which the medicated murderers used non-gun methods.

If you read the medication inserts for SSRIS (antidepressants, sedatives, whatever), they clearly warn you that these meds CAUSE hallucinations, suicidal/homicidal ideation, mania, psychosis, etc. in some users.
I know that much of the frum media has been pushing prescription meds as “treating mental illness like physical illness” (even though this mantra is false since we don’t just a pop a pill as the sole treatment physical illness either, nor do we utilize for physical illness the shoddy methods of diagnosis common in the treatment of mental illness), but prescription medication isn’t as simple as many like to assume.https://www.cchrint.org/2015/09/22/new-study-confirms-cchr-antidepressants-cause-violence/

Prescription meds need to be used with caution and responsible supervision.
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In short, no hypocrisy on the side of the right-wingers.
Most Americans WILL use guns responsibly.
Most immigrants from Third World countries DON’T have compatible values, nor do they want compatible values. (England has studies on this, BTW. A huge percentage of their immigrant population doesn’t want to conform to British values.)

The fact is there have always been assault weapons around as any weapon used to assault someone is an assault weapon
The problem with banning guns is that you take away rights from everyone because of a few evil people who probably would get a gun some other way or find a different weapon because they’re already doing something illegal because murder is illegal